Some Positive Sleep News

Hallelujah!

Finally I feel I can stop complaining, at least for now, and celebrate that my wee girl seems to have worked out how to nap 2-3 times a day and also how to sleep through!  She was going every second night for a while and then last night and the night before she went through on her own!  (Obviously) She did wake once or twice but she went back to sleep all on her own with no intervention from Mummy or Daddy, I am very proud!

I am hoping it might long continue, and if it does, then maybe we can hold off on the sleep training!?

Well done little girl! Now if I can only work out why *I* couldn't sleep last night!

The ongoing sleeping trauma

I have realised that since my husband went away (so far it has been 4 days) I have lost count of the number of times I have had to persuade Naomi to be asleep.

Be it for naps or for night time sleeping, my little girl doesn't want to do it!  I can spend easily 30-40 minutes getting her to go down for each nap and although night time tends to be a little easier she has taken to waking up. Often.

For the first several weeks of her life she was amazing sleeper, she even slept through for about 3 weeks when she was only about 10 weeks old.  We used to joke that we wouldn't know what to do if we had a "real" baby.  And that's the rub, we don't!

We go on holiday shortly and don't think it is fair on Naomi to change things before we go, and then obviously we won't change things on holiday and when we come back we want to give her a couple of weeks to settle back in, but then we have decided we will do some "sleep training".  I have mixed feelings about it but we can't keep going the way we are and as a result I am counting down the days!

I know it is a controversial subject but the bouncing/rocking/wearing out my knees/wearing out my back/having no energy left just has to go.  I cannot do it any more, this has been made all the more obvious to me while hubby is away, making my child sleep actually makes me want to break out into tears, and sometimes I do cry about it, so it is time for a change.

I just hope I can hold out that long, 6 weeks and counting!

Babysitters

So hubby is away and yet life must go on.  So last night I tried to go out and do something just for me, it would have been pure indulgence in that I was meeting up with some people from church to try and talk through some stuff from my past and to lay some of it to rest.  It was time to forget about being a Mummy and just be me, it was time to focus on what my needs were rather than those of my little girl.

The babysitter came, we had dinner then I bathed Naomi and put her down to sleep.  She was asleep for about 25 minutes before I walked out the door.  I had an ominous feeling though.

I had been out for about an hour when the babysitter rang, she was crying and had been since not long after I left.  Clearly, I came back home.  I have now managed to settle my child, though experience tells me I have a pretty awful night ahead of me, as Naomi is likely to wake quite often in an attempt to make sure I am still around, or perhaps to punish me for going out in the first place!

How do you feel about babysitters though?  I feel very mixed about them, on the one hand I think it is reasonable and healthy to need and want time away from the baby and to do things that aren't completely focused on being a parent.  On the other hand, I think it is perfectly reasonable for my baby at not quite 6 months old to expect her Mummy to be there when she needs her.  I think it reasonable that she won't settle for someone she doesn't know very well (which unfortunately includes grandparents, seeing as we live so far from family).

The night before last I went out and left Naomi with a babysitter and she didn't wake once, last night she woke almost immediately on my leaving*.  Should I have stayed at home?  Should I have waited for night her Dad was here? Do I only feel guilty because it went "wrong"? Or should I feel guilty anyway?

Naomi is a good wee girl, I hate the idea that I caused her to be upset but maybe it is a life lesson she just needs to learn?...

*This makes it sound like we leave her often, in fact this was only the 5th time she has ever been left with anyone other than Mummy or Daddy, ever.

Dummies...

As far as I am concerned this is another of those "must-do" topics if you have a parenting blog of any description.  Unfortunately it is difficult to do such a topic without sounding like you are better than everyone else (in my opinion) and so in case I inadvertently come across that way, please know that I very much do NOT consider myself better than anyone else, in fact, normally quite the opposite.

Before Naomi was born, when we didn't know whether she was a boy or a girl and when we still called her Allsort, hubby and I discussed dummies and decided that we weren't 100% keen on the idea but that it did feel like it might save our sanity somehow.  So we went out and bought two dummies, just in case they might help.

When Naomi was born we didn't put it in her mouth, we put my boob in her mouth and then I went up to the ward and she cried and she cried and she cried.  I fed her.  She cried.  I changed her. She cried. I burped her.  She cried.  I cuddled her.  She cried.  The ward staff changed her, burped her and cuddled her and yet she cried and cried and cried some more!

The midwives asked me if I had a dummy and I did, so we tried to put it in her mouth.  She cried, if anything louder than she had before.  We gave up on the dummy idea and just dealt with her crying.

Thankfully, the crying was short lived (not that it felt that way at the time) and after only one or two days she became one of the most content babies I have ever met (though when she does cry she does it loud, I think she likes to make up for all the quiet time!) so the dummy kind of got forgot about.

Then it got hard to put her down to sleep, it was taking hours (literally) each night to get her to settle and hubby and I were slowly but surely losing our sanity!  So out came the dummies again.  We got into a routine whereby you could rock her to sleep and put her down, then if she woke up you put the dummy in her mouth and it would help her go off again.

For quite a few weeks this did result in, what was affectionately known as, the dummy run.  That slightly annoying part of the evening where she was asleep but where she cried when the dummy fell out and you would have to run back up the stairs and re-plug her!  Because of this I was quite pleased when this phase ended and she kind of gave up on the dummy herself.  It did mean it was harder to put her down in the first place, but at least once she was down you could walk away and know she would be alright for a few hours.

Then it seemed she wanted the dummy back again, so for the past several weeks we have put her down and if she has woken put the dummy in her mouth which has helped sleep come back. It normally fell out after about two minutes and she didn't care which seemed ideal!

Now though, we seemed to have entered a new phase, one which I am finding more than a little frustrating.  Now she seems to expect the dummy when you lay her down, her wee mouth opens in expectation, however, when you put it in her wee hand comes up and pulls it out of her mouth.  That would be okay but she does not yet possess the manual dexterity to replace the dummy so begins to cry because the dummy isn't in her mouth, all this despite her being the reason it is no longer there!  This phenomenon resulted in me being awake for 60 minutes in the middle of the night, she didn't need fed and fell asleep almost instantly when I rocked her, but then would wake up when she pulled her own dummy out her own mouth.  Roll on the next phase!

No sooner had I come back....

...as I was gone! My baby girl was sick (see previous post), my husband then got sick, I then got sick! Before I knew it we were all lying on the floor (quite literally) and no-one could move and no-one could keep their food down!

The sickness seems to have largely passed, though I as the last to get ill was the first to get better (I think that comes with being a Mum?) and my husband, although much better and back at work today, is not quite right either and I thought Naomi was better but today she showed us all what she thought of sweet potato by being sick in such a way it landed in her own eye! (Does it make me cruel that (after I cleaned her up) I laughed about this?)

It really has made me realise how, as mums, we really do just have to keep going.  My husband would take himself off to bed but I still was required to make milk.  Come bedtime, too, it was mummy that was expected to continue rocking her to sleep, even though 10 minutes before we had opted for a sponge down rather than a bath as Mummy didn't have the energy to pick the baby up, let alone suspend her in water!

It has really hit home to me that my next holiday will be in about 18 years, assuming I don't have any more children, which, actually, despite it all, I do!!

Radio Silence Ending!

So sorry for my radio silence this last week, I was just enjoying having my friend to stay far too much and then we were visiting family and before I knew it I had hardly posted anything in over a week!

So, while "normal" posting about various parenting issues will recommence tomorrow, I thought I would just do a wee post saying that I just cannot believe how much Naomi is progressing and changing just now!

She is discovering her feet at the moment, I love how much entertainment can be got from just lying on your back holding your toes! Tonight she found her right foot for the first time (she had the left one down a few days ago) and I loved the look of surprise on her face "What, you mean I've got one over here too!?"


I also love watching her take *everything* in, she can sit for ages just watching stuff, anything, although her favourite seems to be to watch me cook! But anything will do, a bit of clothing, another baby, a toy, anything!


She is eating well now, she knows what it means when the bib goes on and the pot of food is there, she waits in anticipation of the contents and so far we haven't really found anything she doesn't like, though broccoli is a definite favourite.


She is definitely growing as a result of all that food, I have just done another round of clearing out her clothes to get rid of the things that don't fit, I could swear it was only 5 minutes since I did that last!  I'm going to take her to baby weigh-in clinic in a couple of weeks, though I am expecting her to have put on a fair bit.

Even with her sleep she is learning all the time.  She is much better at settling when we put her down in the evenings now and although she still wakes often in the night it does seem to be getting a little easier to settle her then too.  She is starting to get the hang of napping too, with more and more worthwhile naps taking place in her cot (rather than the pram or the sling)

I already feel like my little girl is growing up to fast and she is only 5 months old! Can you imagine what I'll be like by the time she tries to go to university?!

To Cry or Not to Cry?

That is the question.

Naomi's night's continue to be unsettled, though she has gone back to waking only once or twice a night, which for her age is pretty good, it just feels horrific because she gave us 3 or 4 weeks of sleeping through the night which led us into a place of false security.

On top of that she seems to be taking longer to settle at nights.  We normally feed to sleep and then put her down, sometimes she wakes during the transfer but a quick bounce from her mummy sees her back to sleep and off we go.  Recently though she has been waking up during the transfer and then needing bounced/rocked/sung to for 30 minutes or so before she goes down.  Last night it took 2 hours! This saw her Dad and I sitting down for a few minutes before 10pm came round and exhausted we went off to bed!

This then brought up the subject of controlled crying and more to the point should we or shouldn't we.  My husband and I are probably both of the opinion that it will need to happen at some point, though I am more inclined to say she is too little now.  What, though, are the alternatives.  We can continue to bounce her as much as she needs which may drive us to the point of distraction, though might preserve our sanity by saving us from the tears.  Is there anything else, though?

I got quite annoyed yesterday having had a moan about things then having lots of people tell me how they got their little ones to sleep but no-one taking into account that Naomi is her own wee self and not a carbon copy of their babies.  People told me to have a routine, this annoyed me because we have one.  People told me to keep her up in the day, despite the fact that not napping got us into a terrible pickle with crying for hours on end for other reasons.  People told me to do controlled crying straight away and others told me to wait.

I get annoyed not because people offer me advice, however, but because there seems to be so much conflicting advice and even evidence, and no clear answers whatsoever.  My husband and I are exhausted and we need to get this sorted and yet no one is even able let alone willing to help us with anything definitive.

Did/do you do controlled crying? What age was your wee one when you did? How do you preserve your sanity throughout the months of sleep deprivation?

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

Breastfeeding traumas

I feel incredibly blessed to have exclusively breastfed Naomi since she was born.  As for any Mum, though, there have been some issues with this along the road.  It can be hard in the middle of the night to know that you *have* to deal with the baby, my husband can't do it.  Sometimes I feel quite tied to Naomi, like I can't be away for very long, not least of all because I hate expressing with a passion and try and do it as little as possible, while still maintaining some sort of life away from the house.

My biggest issues with breastfeeding have come now though, at about 4 months old (although I am sure there will be more in the future).  Naomi is very interested in the world around her and breastfeeding is no way to get to see the world, who wants to look at their Mum's boob or the chair behind her when you could look round the other way and see the people she is talking to, the park you are sitting in or even just the book your Mum thought it would be nice to try and read!!  Naomi and I got a good latch going very quickly when she was born and as a result my nipples didn't hurt very much, they do hurt now with all this on-again-off-again feeding she is doing just now.

The other issue is that my boobs are now covered in bruises where she likes to "hold" on, or pinch my skin.  I have tried giving her things to hold or play with and they satisfy her for a while and then she goes back to pumping my breast to squeeze out the milk and pinching my skin for reasons that I am yet to fathom!!

The next road I have to negotiate is one that Mums using formula need to walk down too; as we start weaning how do you know how much milk to give versus food, and even more than before, as a breastfeeding Mum, how do I know how much milk she is getting at all, and how do I give her less as time goes on?  I know that for now and the next several months milk is the most important part of her diet, and I know that she will take the milk she needs, but I feel a little lost with this particular aspect of breastfeeding!

We have made it through all the other breastfeeding traumas, and so I am sure we will make it through these ones too, but I think I had thought all my breastfeeding woes would be at (and end in) the beginning! Just not true.

Expectations and Obligations

First of all, sorry for not updating for a few days, unfortunately real life got in the way!!

One of the things I have been doing this weekend is that my hubby and I took Naomi down to London and we stayed there with my sister-in-law and her family. She had met Naomi a couple of times but this was the first overnight stay.

We had a lovely afternoon and in the evening she settled down really easily and then later we all went to bed.  Now, this is where I struggle if we stay with people overnight.  If Naomi wakes in the night (as she often does these days, where has my good little sleeper gone?) and we are staying with someone else, I feel an obligation to deal with it quickly, in order to not wake anyone else.  Gone are my feelings of letting it go on a few minutes to see if she settles, gone are my thoughts about teaching her to self settle by not jumping the moment she makes any noise at all.  Before you know it I have been up so many times in the night that I even lose my ability to tell the time and I tell my hubby it is 3am when in fact it is 5am!

The next morning my sister-in-law and her husband make sympathetic noises about how she woke a few times but in the back of my head I am wondering if they are complaining she woke them up too? They have family but there kids have been sleeping through for a long time now, have they forgotten what it is like?

So, how do you deal with the expectations of others, and more to the point how do you sort through the ones that are perceived in your head and the ones that really exist? Do you try and make life as easy as you can for those you are staying with? Or do you expect them to make allowances for you while you are in their home?  What have been you biggest issues where the way you want to parent and the ways that others want you to parent have not matched up?

When it all feels too much...

I have been a Mum for exactly 112 days, this time 16 weeks ago I was in the middle of the long process of labour and since that moment my life has been turned upside down, but I LOVE it! I love being a Mum, not least of all because I believe it is what God made me to be but also because when I look at my daughter smile I can't imagine doing anything else or being anywhere else.

I love how she learns, I love how she explores and works stuff out and I love her cheeky personality. I very much get those moments where I sit and look at her and can't believe I was involved in any way in the making of such a beautiful and precious wee person.

I love our walks in the park and our trips to the supermarket. I love our time in baby groups and even our time in the house reading books together or even just watching TV (I know I shouldn't let her, but that is another blog post!).

I love that when we first brought her home from the hospital the only way she could communicate was with crying but now she chats to us, smiles at us and shows us many of the emotions she is learning to handle. I love that this time last month she couldn't get things in her mouth with any precision but now she can get anything (and everything) in there! I love that this time last week I had never seen her roll over, and now she has done it, twice!

That said, sometimes being a Mum all feels a bit too much, and we all need to talk about these times more. By staying silent about the times when we dread going to bed because we know it is only a matter of time before we will be woken, or about the times when we don't want to breastfeed any more because we feel bound to our babies, or about the times when we just want to have a night off but can't we perpetuate the feelings we have that everyone else has it more sorted than we do. We need to talk about the hard times as well as the good or our bad days will feel even worse for thinking we are alone in feeling that way.

This week I have been reflecting on the fact that one of my friends is struggling a bit, she is tired and her 7 month old shows no interest whatsoever in food and weaning is proving just far too difficult. I don't want things to be hard for her, but before I had this realisation I had been comparing myself and my struggles with my daughter to a picture of parenthood that didn't exist in reality. I was letting myself think that my friend had it sorted and had all the answers, and realising she doesn't has been a really freeing experience for me.

So, let's be open, I am exhausted at the moment as my wee one has stopped sleeping well at night, I need to start weaning shortly but I am not sure if I have the capacity for it and although I don't think I have postnatal depression (I have been depressed before, I know what that feels like) I am having many down days at the moment and the tiredness isn't helping. I no longer find it easy to be around my husband because I don't feel like I have anything to talk about other than Naomi's bowel movements and I have no capacity at ALL for anything intimate which can put a strain on any relationship! Let us all talk about those bad days together, I suspect it will make them easier to cope with and that in turn they will be fewer and further between...

Why it pays to listen!

A few weeks ago, my hubby asked me if he could go to a men's thing that our church was doing.  I am desperate for him to make friends (since we moved 6 months ago) so I made sure we didn't have anything clashing in the diary and said yes.

I guess I was a bit sad we were losing out on a Saturday together, the weekends have always been precious to me, but even more so now that we have Naomi here with us.

Well, last week I found out that the men's thing was not just the Saturday as I had thought, but was also overnight and some of the Sunday!  My husband tells me that I "knew" this, but I think my baby brain must have filtered it out!

So, despite the fact I hate being home alone overnight (this was true even before Naomi was on the scene) I find myself having accidentally agreed to doing so tonight!

Thankfully some friends from church who are also missing their husband's tonight (to the same men's weekend away) have thought of some things to keep us all occupied so I won't really be on my own till the bedtime routine starts.

I was particularly dreading it as Naomi had stopped sleeping through in favour of a waking often routine, but last night she did sleep right through till 7am (from 8pm) which means I am a little more rested and there is hope for her doing the same again tonight!

Wish me luck people!